Special Extension Display to The Midlothian Illinois Record Archives


Alan Moskal
	Present	Absent	Ayes	Nays	Abstain	1st Motion	2nd Motion	1st Approval Minutes	2nd Approval Minutes	1st Close Business	2nd Close Business
July 25, 2007	x		14			2	2
September 26, 2007	x		5			1	1
Totals	2		19			3	3


Frances Kreis-Verble
Frances Verble
	Present	Absent	Ayes	Nays	Abstain	1st Motion	2nd Motion	1st Approval Minutes	2nd Approval Minutes	1st Close Business	2nd Close Business
August 8, 2001	x		11			2	4		x		x
March 8, 2006		x	none	none	none	none	none
January 10, 2007	x		9			1	1
April 25, 2007	x		9			2	2		x
Totals	3	1	29			5	7		2		1


Jim "Mo" Potempa
	Present	Absent	Ayes	Nays	Abstain	1st Motion	2nd Motion	1st Approval Minutes	2nd Approval Minutes	1st Close Business	2nd Close Business
August 8, 2001	x		11			4	2	x
March 8, 2006	x		11			2	5	x		x
January 10, 2007	x		9			1	2		x
April 25, 2007	x		9			1
July 25, 2007		x	none	none	none	none	none
September 26, 2007	x		5			2		x
Totals	5	1	45			10	9	3	1	1


Karen Kreis
	Present	Absent	Ayes	Nays	Abstain	1st Motion	2nd Motion	1st Approval Minutes	2nd Approval Minutes	1st Close Business	2nd Close Business
August 8, 2001		x	none	none	none	none	none
March 8, 2006	x		11			2	1
January 10, 2007	x		9			4				x
April 25, 2007	x		9			2	2			x
July 25, 2007	x		14			1	6		x		x
September 26, 2007	x		5			2				x
Totals	5	1	48			11	9		1	3	1


Michael "Mike" Papineau
	Present	Absent	Ayes	Nays	Abstain	1st Motion	2nd Motion	1st Approval Minutes	2nd Approval Minutes	1st Close Business	2nd Close Business
August 8, 2001	x		11			1	2
March 8, 2006	x		11			2	2
January 10, 2007	x		9				1
April 25, 2007		x	none	none	none	none	1**
July 25, 2007		x	none	none	none	none	none
September 26, 2007		x	none	none	none	none	none
Totals	3	3	31			3	5


Terry Stephens
	Present	Absent	Ayes	Nays	Abstain	1st Motion	2nd Motion	1st Approval Minutes	2nd Approval Minutes	1st Close Business	2nd Close Business
August 8, 2001	x		11				1
March 8, 2006	x		11			3
January 10, 2007	x		9			2	3	x
April 25, 2007	x		9			2	1	x
July 25, 2007	x		14			5	2	x
September 26, 2007	x		5				2		x
Totals	6		59			12	9	3	1


William "Bill" Wilkins
	Present	Absent	Ayes	Nays	Abstain	1st Motion	2nd Motion	1st Approval Minutes	2nd Approval Minutes	1st Close Business	2nd Close Business
August 8, 2001	x		11			3	1			x
March 8, 2006	x		11			2	3		x		x
January 10, 2007	x		9			1	2				x
April 25, 2007	x		9			3	4				x
July 25, 2007	x		14			5	3			x
September 26, 2007	x		5				2				x
Totals	6		59			14	15		1	2	4

Unfortunately, even blogging software has its limitation and sometimes just a good old web page or two does the job just fine as you can hopefully see (gotta love the browser rendering battles!).

A person's record of conversation during a Board Meeting holds a wealth of perspective. For example, it is interesting to see who is willing to go on record as a solo act and who remains silent under what circumstances. Also, the person who approves the most bills does not necessarily signal that individual has anyone's best interest in mind other than caring about being number one in something.

These lists are a part of the public record already funded by taxpayer dollars. Now if there could be just a little sense infused into them...Even the insiders might be able to get some sort of value out of them, let alone the outsiders who happen to gaze upon the Village.

I offer to you this selfish perspective that these selfish issues of my own personal desire because I know for fact they are quickly fixable and cost virtually nothing to initiate since hitting the return key a few times to better space the line items is an already demonstrated skill-set known by the producer of the documents and in less than 15 minutes, copies of these minutes could be sitting on the Village's website rather than on my blog. Until recently, the political scene in Midlothian was highly elite and exclusionary through extraordinary means and measures and the current leader pledged more transparency with the dealings of the Village if he was elected. The website remains the same. I am the temporary host of the documents. Something's not right about that. A citizen broadcasting board minutes on the Internet and a municipality absolutely refusing to...at a significant expense, I might add.

So in the meantime, here are some historical breakouts from a variety of board meeting minutes. Included is their attendance record, how they voted, who made 1st and 2nd motions, who moved for the approval of the previous board meeting minutes and who moved to close the meetings. Granted these lists might be teeny in length, but demonstrations don't have to be long, drawn-out affairs and that's about all I have time to do. For what its worth, according to my estimates, the Village is looking at a couple thousand man-hours just to restore the Municipal Code book from the ashes it should have been turned into decades ago when it was used as kindling in someone's fireplace, even if the newer ordinances are on a hard drive in the Village. It's all in the scanning translation that happens when OCR technology is applied to the text and this book has existed since 1963. Same thing with the board meeting minutes, hence the short list. I have to manually walk through each one, reformat it just from a technical position and then manually counting these various line items.